Atef Najib, a former brigadier general and cousin of ousted president Bashar al-Assad, entered the Palace of Justice in Damascus on Sunday with his hands cuffed, making him the first senior figure of the fallen regime to face a public criminal trial on Syrian soil. The session, convened by the Fourth Criminal Court, formally began a long-delayed transitional justice process. Simultaneously, the court initiated proceedings in absentia against Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher, who remain beyond the reach of Syria’s new authorities, turning a moment of domestic reckoning into one freighted with geopolitical ambiguity.

Najib’s sins are intimately tied to the origins of the civil war. As head of the Political Security Branch in the southern province of Daraa in 2011, he oversaw the arrest and torture of teenagers who had scrawled anti-government graffiti on a school wall. Those acts ignited the popular protests that spiralled into a devastating conflict. In the courtroom, families of the victims watched in silence, some demanding the death penalty, their presence underscoring the raw, unhealed wounds the proceedings have immediately reopened.

Viewed from Damascus, the hearing was choreographed as an assertion of state authority. The state news agency SANA described it as “historic,” noting the attendance of the attorney general, a phalanx of local and international media, and Arab and foreign lawyers. The new rulers are clearly intent on broadcasting a rupture with the past, casting the trial as the cornerstone of a broader transitional justice framework. Yet that same choreography prompted wary commentary from analysts in Beirut, who observe that placing a widely despised security chief in the dock first is a politically safe choice that defers the harder task of confronting the full chain of command.

Observers in London and Washington echoed a cautious welcome, balanced by insistent reminders about standards. The absentia trial of the Assads, who have taken refuge in Moscow, exposes the limits of the proceedings from the start. International legal experts stress that without rigorous adherence to due process, the exercise risks being dismissed as a form of victor’s justice that could inflame rather than reconcile a fractured society. The presence of international monitors is therefore less a celebration of openness than a hedge against that perception.

The path ahead is precarious. Syria’s justice infrastructure bears the deep scars of war and decades of authoritarian manipulation. Transforming a single high-profile hearing into a sustainable mechanism for accountability will demand resources, political consensus, and a security environment that remains far from assured. Some diplomats in Brussels quietly note that the trial could become a bargaining chip in the complex negotiations over Syria’s political future and the eventual fate of the ousted president. For now, the session served mainly as a symbolic opening: a promise, delivered under heavy guard, that the era of absolute impunity has been declared over, even if the hardest judgments still lie far out of reach.